greetings ---
i finally ran into a situation where
my existing approaces are no longer satisfactory.
i never bought "office".
i have a twelve_year_old version of "wordperfect"
from [ at that time ] novell that still works just fine
[ i first used wordperfect in the early 1980's; why change ?
].
it doesn't recognize new ms formats.
sometimes, i can use "wordpad" on
my "win_98_se" box that still works;
but not always.
my lawyer insists on hard_copy and snail_mail,
so my principal application is, actually, obviated.
if files only had a few dozen lines,
i could edit them by hand in "vi".
i simply did not have enough situations
to demand a more sophisticated approach;
now, i do.
i started here [ over 1000 entries ]
http://www.freebsd.org/ports/textproc.html
where i found nothing relevant under "doc" and
where i found "word2x", which looks --really-- old and
where i found "wv", which seemed more promising.
searching the questions and newbies mail archives,
i found antiword and catdoc, but this is from 2002_feb.
while reading up on "wv", i found this
http://www.abisource.com/
which caused me to search.
i found this
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/ports.cgi?query=abiword&stype=all
both of these seem to jog my memory, but my memory ....
my application is to exchange text files, by e_mail,
with someone who thinks ms products are the be_all and end_all
[ after all,
if "everyone" is spending thousands of dollars on software,
just like he is,
what makes me so special ?
].
i anticipate acquiring other people like this in the near future,
so my time on this just may be well_spent.
in general,
these are not the kind of folks who find
manipulating files intuitively obvious.
yet, i may find that i have to give them special instruction.
i am not looking for something wonderful,
just reasonably competent and reasonably current.
if, in addition to my desired direction,
i can convert a 7_bit_ascii to a ".doc" file for his benefit,
that's some further whining that i can avoid.
i strongly suspect that,
as soon as this becomes a solved problem,
ms changes something critical,
so this may be a fool's errand.
none_the_less, i'll give it a try.
which one or several things are generally accepted
for this format_conversion task ?
is this "abiword" one of them or do i seek something else ?
if something else, can someone point me in a useful direction
[ whether or not it is something i have named ] ?
while 6.2 and, soon, 7.x are de rigeur,
if it works on 4.11 [ very long story ], that's a plus.
thanks whole bunches in advance.
[ please cc me,
as my attempt to re_subscribe to the list as a courtesy
doesn't seem to be taking.
]
rob